Five Questions with Radu Jibotean, Director, Travel Industries, Mastercard

We caught up with Radu Jibotean, Director, Travel Industries, Mastercard to get his thoughts on the role data is playing in supporting airlines and their acquirers as they recover and grow.

1. What is the T&E Risk Monitor?

I’m really excited about Mastercard’s innovation through the T&E Risk Monitor because it’s the kind of solution that I would have loved to have available to me when I worked in the acquiring world a couple years ago.

It’s a solution that supports acquirers to demystify and manage the credit risk exposure on their deferred delivery merchant portfolios. The solution was built in partnership with Actuary and combines secure payment, booking and service data to provide acquirers with greater end-to-end visibility into merchant payments. ?Data-driven decisions enable the appropriate and confident management and release of funds to travel merchants, ultimately protecting acquirers against increased financial risk while supporting greater liquidity for the travel sector.

2. What travel sector challenges does it address?

Acquirers who support Deferred Delivery Merchants (DDM) face a significant challenge, assessing and taking appropriate action to determine exposure or risk. That’s because DDM transactions involve a time delay between when a consumer pays for something and when the service is delivered. For example, in the travel sector the delay between when a traveller pays for a flight ticket and when they board the plane.

Because Mastercard has a strong history working with financial institutions and travel merchants across the globe, it’s a real industry challenge that we wanted to work to address. We therefore teamed up with Actuary to leverage its travel insights platform and combine that with Mastercard’s global travel industry partnerships and experience to launch the T&E Risk Monitor.?

3. How does it benefit acquirers?

?The solution has been developed to increase visibility across the travel payment lifecycle and delivers this through an interactive dashboard from which customers can run reports and create alerts. By combining data from multiple sources and providing a secure platform for acquirers and airlines to access, the T&E Risk Monitor addresses the lack of transparency between the stakeholders and ensures that all parties have the information they need to make data-led versus perceived or fear-based decisions and empowers them to put in place the correct level of mitigation.

4. What have you heard from travel merchants like airlines in response?

The solution was created based on industry feedback, what we heard from customers and partners and we are thrilled that its created a wave of support from travel merchants and their payment partners. We are therefore incredibly happy to be at the forefront of an innovation that’s making a real impact in the day-to-day running of businesses at the heart of the sectors recovery and growth.

We’re seen great progress with partners such as Paysafe who recently announced the integration of the solution, and we are hearing from travel merchants who are benefitting from the automation and transparency of reporting. ?We have many other partners integrating the solution into their payment practices and look forward to sharing the impact it is having over the coming months.

? 5. What can we expect from the future?

We are seeing a high level of adoption, so the solution is certainly resonating with the sector. We are thrilled to see that new small and medium acquirers are joining the space with increased confidence, while legacy travel acquirers are now ready to take more travel business in their books given the higher level of transparency that T&E Risk Monitor provides them with.

We are excited to scale the solution further over the coming months, and continue to support the travel payment ecosystem with innovation that makes a difference to recovery and continued growth.

To learn more about how Mastercard is powering the travel economy, connect with Radu directly on?LinkedIn ?or contact Mastercard’s global B2B Travel team at?[email protected] .